PSHE & Growth Mindset

St John’s provides a nurturing learning environment. We encourage mutual respect between adults and children alike, provide opportunities for responsibility and the development of self-esteem in a happy and caring atmosphere. Likewise, we aim to develop children’s resilience when overcoming barriers and challenges they may face with a positive learning attitude. We foster the Growth Mindset approach to promote this through school. This empowers children to take leading roles in their own learning journey. It promotes positive outlooks and equips children with the passion to progress and the strength to believe in their own potential. The teaching and learning of PSHE supports and promotes this vision.

PSHE lessons teach diverse beliefs, values and attitudes that reflect society. It allows children to draw upon and share their own experiences as well as listen to the experiences of others. It offers reflection time, where children are encouraged to form their own opinions and develop their own attitudes and values. It guides children to develop themselves, their understanding of the

world, and their ability to communicate their feelings. PSHE in our school also helps children to understand British Values. This supports them to value themselves, respect others, appreciate differences and diversity and feel confident and informed as a British citizen.

How does PSHE look in our school?

Early Years.

In the Early Years, staff provide opportunities for children to develop socially, emotionally, spiritually and morally under the prime area of the Early Years Foundation Stage, ‘Personal, Social and Emotional Development.’ This is underpinned in each of the 17 areas of learning, and is developed across the Early Years environment. As well as this, it is taught weekly in discreet Circle Time lessons. Issues and themes are usually discussed through emotion stories, role-play and discussions about first hand experiences.

Key Stage One.

In Key Stage 1, children are taught weekly discreet PSHE lessons where we aim for children to learn to:

manage their feelings in a positive way.

share their views and opinions.

make simple choices about their health and well-being.

recognise that bullying is wrong and list some ways to get help in dealing with it.

recognise the effect of their behaviour on other people.

identify and respect differences and similarities between people.

Key Stage Two.

In Key Stage 2, children also have weekly discreet PSHE lessons where we aim for children to learn to:

identify positive strategies in tackling new challenges.

discuss some of the bodily and emotional changes at puberty, and demonstrate some

ways of dealing with these in a positive way.

talk about a range of jobs, and explain how they will develop skills to work in the

future.

make choices about how to develop healthy lifestyles.

make judgements and decisions and list some ways of resisting negative peer

pressure around issues affecting their health and wellbeing.

describe bullying and develop ideas of how to tackle bullying.

identify different types of relationships

respond to negative behaviours.

Growth Mindset

Here at Leigh St. John's we believe that building resilience is the key to being successful in everything that you do. We explain to the children that there are three zones of learning and invest a lot of time in teaching children about different strategies they can use if they feel they are in the 'Panic Zone'. These strategies are known to the children as 'Learning Powers'. In order to understand how learning powers work it is important to understand the three learning zones. These are as follows;

Comfort Zone

This is a zone in which children can do the work without feeling challenged. They should not be in this zone for very long within a lesson as their brains are not being stretched and challenged as much as they can be.

Challenge Zone

This is a good zone to be in. In this zone children are growing their brains and moving on in their learning.

Panic Zone

This zone is the zone that makes people feel uncomfortable and as the name suggests can send them into a panic. Children may enter this zone sometimes but it is important that they remember to use their Learning Powers to help them to get out of this zone and back into the Challenge Zone.

Children at St John's will be focussing on eight different learning powers this year. These are as follows;

Be cooperative

Have a go

Don’t give up

Have fun

Be imaginative

Be Curious

Keep improving

Concentrate

This year each class will be allocated one of the learning powers. They will explore this learning power and come up with strategies in which it can be applied in real life situations. Each class will also be creating a Learning Power Champion- a character who will be our St. John's mascot for that particular learning power. Once completed, these mascots will be shared in an assembly and each class will discuss the strategies their mascot uses to successfully use their learning power. The Learning Power Champions will then be displayed around school and made visible to parents to encourage lots of discussion at home about the importance of resilience.

If you would like to learn more about recent studies into the importance of resilience then follow the links below.